Feedback from New User Initial Setup

[Sarynth]

My thinking as I was setting this up for the first time. Just feedback, no action required.

http://wiki.atavismonline.com/project/installation/
 - I'd appreciate if with the "Source database files" section, you mention what Collation to use when creating a new database. Looks like utf8_general_ci.
 - As I may be developing other things on my machine, I would appreciate a database name prefix so they can be grouped together. I.E. ata_master, ata_admin, ata_world_content, ata_atavision.
 - Consider not assuming the mysql user has permissions to create a database. Many sysadmins will create a user and the necessary databases, then the user won't have database create/drop permissions.

(I am wondering how hard it would be if I wanted to change the database names, so I could have the demo set of databases, and a fresh new databases for my own development both installed on my local machine.)

Database password should not be printed in plain text in the logs.
 - DEBUG [2018-11-22 19:17:50,374] main                 *** url = jdbc:mysql://localhost/master?useUnicode=yes&characterEncoding=UTF-8 username = example password = example

TextMesh Pro failed. I removed the package, installed the store version, then installed the demo assets, and I believe it overwrote a file from the asset store. Deleted the TextMesh Pro folder, reimported from the store, and all is well.

Make it easier to find the instructions on setting admin for the player. Also, if the editor isn't working, saying to go to db: admin, table: account, and set status from 1 to 4 will set admin, would be helpful.

Demo starting player defaults should have more gold, and the horse in inventory perhaps.

*** Please! Make the unity editor password field able to be pasted into.

When entering account details, I got an invalid Email/License Key combination. I believe it's right.

---
Unity was unusable with the editor window open. I suspect something was configured to look at a connection somewhere that didn't exist. Error message as follows...

System.TimeoutException: A connection attempt failed because the connected party did not properly respond after a period of time, or established connection failed because connected host has failed to respond.
 ---> System.IO.IOException: Read failure ---> System.Net.Sockets.SocketException: A connection attempt failed because the connected party did not properly respond after a period of time, or established connection failed because connected host has failed to respond.

  at System.Net.Sockets.Socket.Receive (System.Byte[] buffer, Int32 offset, Int32 size, SocketFlags flags) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 
  at System.Net.Sockets.NetworkStream.Read (System.Byte[] buffer, Int32 offset, Int32 size) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 
  --- End of inner exception stack trace ---
  at System.Net.Sockets.NetworkStream.Read (System.Byte[] buffer, Int32 offset, Int32 size) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 
  at MyNetworkStream.Read (System.Byte[] buffer, Int32 offset, Int32 count) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 
  --- End of inner exception stack trace ---
  at MyNetworkStream.HandleOrRethrowException (System.Exception e) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 
  at MyNetworkStream.Read (System.Byte[] buffer, Int32 offset, Int32 count) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 
  at MySql.Data.MySqlClient.TimedStream.Read (System.Byte[] buffer, Int32 offset, Int32 count) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 
UnityEngine.Debug:LogError(Object)
DatabasePack:LoadData(String, String)
AtavismUnity:checkStatus(String)
AtavismUnity:checkServer()
AtavismUnity:OnGUI()
UnityEngine.GUIUtility:ProcessEvent(Int32, IntPtr)
---

 

[Martin (Dragonsan)]

Thank you for your extensive feedback, really appreciate for it.
Character set and collation are not mentioned in the documentation, because scripts are creating it properly for you, at the beginning of each installation *.sql file you can find

CHARACTER SET utf8
COLLATE utf8_general_ci;

and the same for each database, we added this information in the mentioned documentation.

Database prefix or even different database name is allowed, you would have to edit 4 lines in each sql file (for example)

DROP DATABASE IF EXISTS admin;
CREATE DATABASE IF NOT EXISTS admin
USE admin;

The USE admin line should be twice in the file.
And then in the world.properties and auth.properties configuration files, you can adjust their names using these parameters:

atavism.db_name=atavism
atavism.admin.db_name=admin
atavism.content.db_name=world_content
atavism.auth.db_name=master

You can, of course, adjust privileges, we proposed the easiest way, but you can give privileges without a grant, create and drop option and even more, for each database you can set different user, if you will want to use each database on a separate server, which is also possible.

It's not an issue, as the same password must be included in the configuration file, so no matter if in logs or in the configuration file, it's there. But of course for the security purpose when handling logs it would be a good idea to not have to hand over the password automatically.

We moved the TextMesh Pro point at the beginning of the documentation to make it as a first step: http://wiki.atavismonline.com/project/atavism-client-unity-installation/

For the admin part, it's included in the: https://youtu.be/t226oBlVZAg?t=536 video tutorial, but we will think how to present it alternatively to make it more obvious, thank you for pointing it out.

Good point, we already added 5 gold for all new characters, scrolls are purchasable through the merchant (to summon horse and dragon).

We will add a possibility to paste login/password in the Atavism Editor, but it should be saved in the registry, so you should be logged automatically after you will open it again.

The last mentioned issue is related to the Atavism Editor, which is checking server status (this element is at this point only for our VM mode). It's harmless, but we will think about how to handle it nicely.

Again, thank you for your time and writing such comprehensive feedback.

 

[Sarynth]

Thanks Killersan. I'm well versed in database administration. Glad to hear on the application side, I only need to adjust the configuration files. That's great news. I was concerned the database names might have been hard coded in the source or something. I'll certainly give it a try.

Thanks for the rest of the insight as well. Wonderful foundation you've got here.